The Pickle Guys, 357 Grand St, New York (Lower East Side), NY 10002
Pickle fan? The Pickle Guys is a store devoted to pickles. They make the widest variety of pickles using old-world pickling methods (brining without preservatives). The pickles are kosher, vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free. Ask for free samples. They’re stored in pickle barrels that take up most of the room in the store.
You’ll find pickled tomatoes, peppers, brussels sprouts, pineapples, olives, okra, garlic, beets, relish, kraut, etc., sold as half-pints, pints, quarts, and ½ gallons. If you want a whole dill pickle, there are several levels of sourness to choose from.
Sour kraut: thinner cut cabbage, some crunch, definitely sour
Pickled red onions: thicker cut, sweeter, crunchy
Sour and spicy whole pickles: crunchy, not that spicy
They also sell pickled themed merch like pickle candy, pickle socks, shirts, etc.
I baked a focaccia loaf(?) yesterday for today's dinner. I was feeling REAL lazy. . . I haven't really baked in months (I used to bake about once a week), so I just got the water temperature right for my yeast and plopped all the ingredients into one big bowl.
Now I've made a decent focaccia bread before, but it's been over a year since I last baked it and I've only done it once. So I end up with this sticky lump of goop in my bowl, and since the recipe said the dough should be sticky, I put that sucker straight on a well-oiled baking sheet.
It sort of just splopped down onto the center of the sheet in a lumpy mess, so I gently massaged it until it almost spread to the corners of the sheet. But it was not even, at all, at this point. So I put a little more olive oil on my hands and got to work.
By the time I left it to rise, it was not at all even, but it almost sort of looked like a sheet of dough instead of a writhing mass of something unsavory. It was pretty cold out, and my family left some doors/windows open which dropped the temperature even more. But the bread rose!
It didn't rise much, and I did not give it time to rise more as I probably should have because it was a work night. But, I was happy enough that the yeast didn't just die and give up, so I sprinkled on a few spices (I kept it light because the sandwiches it was intended for had plenty of flavor), pokes a ton of holes in it, and I stuck that lumpy mess into the oven.
I wasn't particularly selective with my recipe, so I didn't have high hopes for the bread. But despite being totally uneven and not having risen nearly enough to cut a sandwich, I was quite happy with the flavor and the texture of the resulting focaccia bread!
I sliced it up such that two pieces could form the top and bottom of a sandwich (like I said, it was too thin to just cut in half). Whilst all that was happening, I chopped up a bunch of veggies and pickled them in rice vinegar and sugar for the sandwiches.
And finally, tonight, I chopped some fresh jalapeños (de-seeded for I am weak) and cilantro, made a cheap aioli, and cooled some chicken in lime zest, chili flakes, garlic, and hoisin sauce.
It wasn't a perfect dinner, but I was pretty darn proud of it! Especially since I finished it during the week when I work! As a person once said, and I really feel this sometimes, "I am a domestic goddess" 😂
@zip001 - inspired by Luke Ngyuen’s duck salad, I made the following weekend my version of it: roasted Chinese duck (frozen leftovers from the Peking duck cooked earlier) with pickled carrot, onion, cucumber, bamboo shoots and cabbage, with fresh salad, broad beans, mint and basil, peanuts, roasted rice and chilli Nuoc Cham dressing. Was it the same? No. Was it bloody as good? Yes!
